Adventures of Caine and Kerrigan Part One: Family is Family
by Phoebe Darling
Summary: Horatio Caine finds out that he has a half-sister. He never knew about her. The first time that he finds out about her is when she reaches out for help. He saves her but who did it. His sister is strong and too stubborn for her own good. She is a Marine which gets NCIS involved. Multiple attempts are made on her life. When the dust settles they go to New Orleans to help a friend.
1. Chapter: Wait Horatio Has A Sister

Chapter: 1  
Wait Horatio Has a Sister

Lieutenant Horatio Caine is at home one unseasonably cold, rainy spring day. It is only about 6 A.M on a Friday when he is woken by his cell phone ringing. He doesn't recognize the number. Still, something inside of him tells him to open the video message that he has just got.

The video is a bit cryptic, but he quickly understands what it is. The message contains a video file and an attachment.

The woman that was talking looks very familiar to him. Though he wracks his brain, he just can't figure out how he knows her.

She is a younger woman whose thick but straight, fiery red hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail. She had piercing ice-blue eyes that seem to be looking right through him into his soul.

The video goes on for several minutes. "My name is Renee Hope Kerrigan, and Horatio, if you are watching this video, it means that I missed my check-in. If I don't check in on my computer every 24 hours, it will send you this message. To make a long story short, I am your half-sister. I doubt that you would remember, but my birth mother was one of your teen neighbors from that New York apartment."

"She was sexually assaulted by your father. I was put up for adoption right after my birth mother committed suicide. I was adopted by a single woman who, on her death bed, gave me my original birth certificate. It says that Ronald Caine was my father. The attached file is a photograph of my original birth certificate. As soon as I found out about my possible siblings, I hired a private detective to find out who they were."

"I am so sorry to find out about my brother, Raymond, along with your wife, Marisol."

"I guess that Law enforcement must be in our blood since we all have law enforcement careers. When I found out that you were my brother, I didn't want to intrude on your life, but I moved here from South East Texas to be near the only family I had."

"I am a former United States Marine Corps K-9 trainer and handler, then Customs and Border Protection K-9 trainer and handler now I'm an MDPD K-9 trainer and handler. You and I have even worked a few missing child cases together."

"A few weeks ago my dog Echo and I helped search that Paintball course for the shooter. I think Echo growling at the suspect distracted him enough for you to shoot him dead."

When he hears the last part, he is finally able to place her. She was the canine officer who cleared the drug house after it blew up, and she helped clear the paintball facility where Piper was shot. They helped look for the suspect in Piper's mother's murder.

"I'm in trouble, and I don't trust anyone else to help me. I have had several prices put out on my head. That is the only thing that could make me turn in my commission with the Marines and leave the Border Patrol. I don't know if anyone in the MDPD had been paid off to give me up."

"Please have your team track the attached location since it is my smartwatches GPS. I'll explain everything better, I promise." The message continued.

"My dogs Echo and Charlie are in a panic room at my home. I have several prices on my head, but the price on their heads is even larger, so I put a panic room in and put them in it every night to keep them safe."

"It's fireproof and bombproof. The panic room itself is under the kitchen island. However, the lock is in the den. You will have to pull out the book (Where the Red Fern Grows) that will unlock the panic room locking panel on the kitchen island itself."

"To open the safe room, put my password in, and play the attached audio file. My password is the number address of that New York apartment where it all started. Please send someone to check on them. My canines are my best friends and my life."

Horatio looks back down at his phone's screen and notices another attachment. It contains an audio file for her panic room's voice recognition.

The video ends and leaves Horatio stunned. Quickly he calls his team as well as Dave Benton, the team's Audio Video guy, and Frank Tripp, the team's Homicide Detective. He needs all hands on deck.

His first call is his brother in law Eric Delko. He knows that he can call Eric about anything and at any time and that Eric would drop what he is doing and help him.

Horatio is not sure if Eric is staying at Calleigh's house that night, but he asks Eric not to tell her since she has her two adopted kids Austin and Patty, to get ready for school, and he knew that she would hurry over to help him. He doesn't want to worry her unnecessarily.

Since he doesn't need his entire team, he called Ryan Wolfe, Frank Tripp, and finally Dave Benton to all meet at the crime lab. He has an emergency that he needs everyone's help with, but he doesn't want to bring Natalia or Walter in on their day off unless he absolutely needs to.

It takes about thirty minutes for the four-team members that he called to get to the lab and an additional thirty minutes for Benton to trace her GPS signal.

Tripp, who is Horatio's oldest friend, wants to know what it is all about. So Horatio plays the video file for Frank. Seeing a familiar face, Tripp is both confused and amazed at the same time.  
Benton traces Renee's GPS watch to a huge abandoned cannery warehouse near the port of Miami. While driving to the warehouse with Eric and Tripp, Horatio calls for an ambulance to meet them at the scene since they have a possible physical assault or worse.

Horatio and Eric knock down the door with Tripp's assistance. Carefully they follow other police officers to clear the warehouse. Some officers, including Tripp, break left, and others break right to clear the building. The pair fan out from the other officers by going straight to clear the warehouse quicker.

It takes them a few more minutes to reach a spot in the chaos of the maze-like warehouse, where the two of them have to split apart when the path goes in different directions. Horatio goes left, and Eric goes right.

Alone, Horatio finds himself deep inside the warehouse's labyrinth-like floor-plan. When he turns a corner only to be face to face with the person he was looking for. She is hanging by her wrists from a wench with her feet bound together attached to an eye screw deeply embedded into the concrete floor.

Horatio is not able to recognize this woman as the woman in the video since she was beaten beyond recognition. If it weren't for her very distinctive eye color, he would not have been able to recognize her. Renee's icy blue eyes are almost white. Her eyes are that light. The person hanging in front of him had ice blue, almost white eyes.

She is wearing just a white cotton nightie that is just torn to pieces, and it's hanging off of her tiny frame by threads. Both her nightie and she are covered in blood. Blood is dripping down her face and off of her body.

He can't help but be amazed, thinking to himself, "How the hell is she still conscious after the beating that she received."

The thought crosses his mind right as she takes a ragged breath and closes her eyes. She has stopped moving and looks like she had died.

Very carefully, Horatio reaches out to check her for a Carotid pulse since she is unresponsive and unconscious. He really doesn't think that he'll find a pulse with so much blood at the scene. Horatio placed his index finger and middle finger together over her Carotid Artery to feel for a heart rate. To his enormous relief, he feels a barely palpable heartbeat.

Her attackers made a homemade rack that was ratcheted so tight it had ripped her arms upwards towards the ceiling. The move effectively dislocated both of her shoulders.

Dislocation isn't the only thing that happened to her shoulders. She also has a through and through gunshot wound to her right shoulder.

She was beaten to within an inch of her life. It should have killed her, but she's too stubborn to die. Below Renee's body, a small pool of blood had formed, and it had already started to solidify. This is just further evidence that she has been bleeding and hanging from the wench for hours.

Horatio still has to figure out how to get her down. Down and off of the homemade rack that she is hanging from. Carefully Horatio pulls out the knife that he has in his front right pocket. He needs to cut her feet clear of the binding that kept her ankles attached to the eye screw in the concrete floor.

As Horatio is starting to cut the rope, his cell phone rang, which causes Horatio to stop cutting her down. It is Ryan Wolfe, his co-worker, who is calling.

Before Horatio had left the lab to go to the warehouse, he had Ryan run Renee's DNA that was on file with MDPD against his DNA using his father as the potential paternal link, and the results were a fifty percent match.

She is, indeed, his half-sister. Horatio was going to help this fellow officer whether or not she is his sister.

When he hears that she is related to him, his determination heightens. As carefully as he can, Horatio finished cutting her bound feet free of the screw. When her feet swing clear from the binding, Horatio needs to put his body below her so that he can support her weight as he cuts her down.

Wrapping his left arm around her small five-foot one-inch frame at her waist, he gently holds on as he cut her loose with his right hand. When she finally falls free, her body heavily slumps down over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. His sister doesn't weigh a lot, just one hundred fifteen pounds soaking wet.  
As carefully as he can, he slowly starts to place his sister's body down on the cold hard concrete floor.

When he puts her lower legs to the ground, he can clearly hear the sounds of major bone on bone movement. Her legs are exceedingly swollen, so Horatio figures out that she has been hanging for hours. He couldn't no matter how much he wracked his brain figure out how many hours it would have been. Based on the amount of swelling, he knows both her lower legs are broken.

Laying her rib cage on the ground, he notices the deep black and blue bruising around her ribs, and he just knows that she has most of her ribs broken, but he can't tell the severity of the breaks. It can take days for the bruises to become visible, depending on how many blood vessels are bleeding under the skin. With massive damage, her bruises had become visible immediately.

When he prepared to lower her neck to the ground, he looks down at her forearms, where he also sees severe swelling and deduces, they too are broken badly.

Just as he places his hands on her skull, he feels the bones of her skull shift ever so slightly. Upon feeling the bones move, he just freezes in his tracks. He can't put her head down for fear that it will push a bone fragment into her brain, killing her instantly.

Horatio noticed that he didn't feel any shifting of bones when he was holding the base of her skull near the Occipital bone.

Gently holding that part of his sisters head, he just screams for help. "Eric, Frank over here, she's alive get me a medic now."

Eric and Tripp follow the sound of their boss's voice to quickly find Horatio holding the victim's head in his hands.

Horatio tells his brother-in-law and the detective the victim is his half-sister and that Ryan confirmed the link. Fearing that they will lose her before they get her to the hospital, Horatio softly speaks to her and hopes it is enough to keep her in the land of the living.

"Hold on there sister, stay with me, we have too much of life to catch up on. You are the only blood family that I have left, and family is everything to me."  
With her head cradled in his left hand, he pulls out the penlight from his right front pocket since he needs to check her eyes' response to light. Having Eric open her eyes, he shines the light into his sister's eyes, looking for her reaction to light.

His heart sinks when he sees that her eyes are fixed, dilated, and unresponsive to light. He knows that that means that his sister's brain is swelling.  
"Please stay with me, sweetheart help is coming," he pleas.

When the paramedics get to Horatio and his sister, she is still slipping in and out of consciousness. The medics are worried about the severity of her head trauma and the fact that Horatio felt the bones of her skull shift in his hands.

Going as fast as they can, the paramedics have to stabilize her as best as they can since Horatio refuses to let go of his sister's head for fear of killing her. As the medics get ready to load her into the ambulance, Horatio forces his way in since he still has her skull in his hands.

Eric has known Horatio since 1997, and when he thinks back, he hasn't seen his boss as scared as he was now since Eric's sister and Horatio's wife was shot.

As concerned about Renee's survival as Eric was, he can't imagine how his boss feels since to Eric, she is a victim, but to Horatio, this is his baby sister.

Watching his boss holding his sisters head in his hands, Eric lovingly tells his brother in law that he will get the police officers to secure the scene, and then he will meet Horatio at the hospital.

Eric said that all while walking beside Horatio as he runs behind the gurney holding his sister's head in his hands.

The entire drive in the ambulance Horatio holds his sister's head speaking softly and often to her. It seems to take forever to get to the hospital.


	2. Chapter: The Assault

Chapter: 2  
The Assault

Pulling into the emergency bay and jumping out of the ambulance, Horatio hears the paramedic talk to the doctor.

"We have a female in her late thirties with severe physical trauma. Witness states that they felt the bones of her skull shifting, and he refused to let go of her head until he knew it wouldn't kill her. Her pupils were fixed and dilated."

Horatio recognizes his sister's doctor as Alexx Woods, who is a close and trusted friend of Horatio and his team. He knows that Alexx will try everything to save his sister. He also knows that Alexx will let him inside until he knows that putting his sisters head down will not kill her.

Running right behind the gurney with his sister Horatio pushes himself inside the trauma room. Non-medical staff isn't normally allowed in the trauma room, but since Horatio will not let go of his sister's head, the hospital has to let him in if they are going to save her life.

Horatio doesn't let go of her head until the hospital takes a portable x-ray of her entire skull and shows Horatio that Renee's Occipital bone is not broken. Still, it does have a stress fracture, so he has to be careful when he places her head on the table.

When he places her head on the table, Horatio is pushed rather forcefully out of the emergency room by another doctor.

He is finally able to check in on his team and see if they had found anything at the warehouse. He is going to have to trust Eric and his team to take care of the case without him. He just found out that he has a little sister, and he isn't willing to leave her for anything.

After Eric closed the ambulance doors, he helps Tripp secure the crime scene. Eric then spoke to the police officers, and he rushes to the hospital to be with Horatio in this hour of fear.

Before the ambulance leaves the crime scene, Eric tells his brother and boss that he will meet them at the hospital since Horatio is going with his sister in the ambulance to the hospital.

As Horatio watches his sister be wheeled from the trauma room of the hospital to surgery suite two, he is left alone.

He can only pace the length of the emergency room hall going back and forth, almost wearing a path into the tile flooring.

It takes Eric close to half an hour to get to the hospital, and by this time, Horatio is driving the nurses insane with his unending pacing.

Walking through the hospitals revolving doors into the waiting room, Eric is startled to see Horatio almost as white as a ghost. By the time the doctors come out of the surgery suite, it has been close to twelve hours.

When Horatio sees Eric, relief floods his face. Horatio is very grateful to his brother that he isn't alone. Eric begs Horatio to sit and wait with him, but Horatio can't do it, he can't sit still.

When the surgeon finally comes out to talk to the pair, all the color had drained out of Horatio's face. He was a complete and total wreck. Seeing the surgeon walking through the door, Horatio runs to him with anticipation of the news. Before the surgeon can talk, Horatio begs him for any good news.

"Well, she survived the surgery, but she is by no means out of the woods. The only reason she's alive is the severity of her beating. Her entire skull was shattered, so when her brain swelled, her skull just expanded with it. She was beaten very badly, and it had broken a lot of bones. Follow me, and I will take you into a consulting room to show you her X-rays," her surgeon tells an anxious Horatio and Eric.

The two quietly walk behind the surgeon into a different room away from the sounds of the waiting room. When the surgeon turns on the X-rays light, Horatio and Eric are horrified by the sheer number of breaks that Renee had survived receiving.

All of her ribs were broken in multiple places. The tibia and fibula of both lower legs and the radius and ulna of both forearms were broken. Her cheekbones and both eye sockets are shattered as well as fracturing two vertebrae in her spine. Renee also suffers from a partially collapsed lung caused by blunt force trauma.

"Both of her shoulders are dislocated, and she is currently in surgery to repair the broken bones of her arms and legs as well as to secure her shoulders and make sure they don't get dislocated again," the surgeon finishes talking and turns to face the pair. "We also repaired her collapsed lung."

Before the surgeon leaves the room, he tells them, "when she is out of her orthopedic surgery and settled into her recovery room, we will allow you to see her and spend some time with her."

When Horatio sees her X-rays and finds out the extent of her injuries, he says to himself, "my God, they tortured her, and apparently she didn't tell them what they want to hear, or they would have just put a bullet in her head."

Punching a hole in the hospital wall, he quietly allows a bit of pride for her. She is definitely a Caine. Like her brother's, she would not go quietly since they are all fighters, and she could not be broken. He is beyond pissed that they tortured her. He was even more driven to find her attackers and make them pay dearly. Nobody hurts his family and gets away with it.

The next time that Horatio sees his sister, she was intubated and connected to a ventilator. Renee's head was wrapped up in gauze to protect the incisions in her skull.

If Horatio doesn't know any better, he wouldn't recognize his baby sister since she had been beaten beyond recognition. Walking inside of her recovery room, Horatio stops in his tracks. She is lying there on her bed intubated since the doctors put her on life support.

The doctors don't usually like to use drugs like Pentobarbital to force a coma on a patient.  
However, with her extensive and severe injuries, the doctors felt compelled to put Renee in a coma. They thought that they need to allow her body to focus on healing and not on keeping her alive.

Renee's surgery to stabilize her skull lasts twelve full hours, during which the surgeon places a tiny metal plate and screws to stabilize her Occipital bone's stress fracture. The surgeon also needs to figure out a way to stabilize her skull without putting pressure on her already swollen brain.

Renee's heart stops twice during the twelve hours she is under anesthesia. When her heart stops for the first time, the medical staff can restart it fairly quickly with two shocks to her heart at two hundred fifty joules.

However, the doctors and nurses try to restart her heart for quite a while the second time her heart stops.  
Renee doesn't respond when they shock her heart at two hundred joules. Increasing the joules to two hundred fifty, the team tries again to get Renee's heart going. Her heart doesn't respond to the shock.

The doctors increase the joules again to three hundred, and they shock her heart, they get no response. The doctors turn the defibrillator to three hundred fifty joules. Still, Renee's heart doesn't respond. As a last-ditch effort, one of the doctors cranks the defibrillator to three hundred sixty joules.

This time they see a single beat on her heart monitor. The whole surgical team in her surgery suite wait with bated breath to see if that means that they got her heart beating again. When her heart beats again, then again, they all breathe a collective sigh of relief that they got her back.

Horatio had only left the hospital a few days before when Piper's dad got home. Today he is back this time for family. Horatio is not ever going to leave her now that he knew she is his baby sister.


	3. Chapter: When Two Hero's Meet

Chapter: 3  
Two Hero's Meet

By this time, Calleigh already dropped Austin and Patty off at school. When she gets to the lab, Eric runs outside to her and tells her about Horatio's sister. Going on to tell her that he has known for quite a while. He wanted to tell her, but H told him not to tell her.

Now that she is at work, she is mad at both Eric for not telling her and Horatio for making her boyfriend not tell her. However, she needs to call her boss. To ask him why he didn't tell her about his sister and her assault.

"I'm sorry, but you needed to get Austin and Patty to school. I didn't want to distract you or worry you unnecessarily. I knew that you would drop everything, and you'd come to help me." Horatio tells her.

Calleigh then asks her boss if he needs anything to which Horatio says, "My sister is an MDPD canine officer. Can you go talk to Benton and get my sister's password and audio file and go check on her dogs. Can you also bring her dog named "Echo" to the hospital that is my sister's current canine? I know that my sister will want to see her partner when she wakes up."

Benton gives Calleigh the instructions as to how to unlock the panic room and where it is. Before giving her an audio recording with a voice message and a number password to open it.

The panic room is simple enough to get open with Renee's detailed instructions. Calleigh pulls out the book, "Where the Red Ferns Grow." She doesn't know if it had worked since she doesn't hear anything.

Rushing to the kitchen, Calleigh looks closely at the kitchen island. Upon closer inspection, she notices a tiny pull that is out of place. When she tugs on the tiny pull, another panel comes down.

This panel has a keypad and a tiny speaker. Next to the speaker is a small, flashing red button.

When Calleigh presses the button down, the speaker roars to life-giving her step by step instructions on how to unlock it.

The speaker says, "Please input the number code." Calleigh enters the number code that Benton had handed her.

Next, she was told, "Push the red button again and speak into the speaker to confirm the voice recognition."

At this time, Calleigh presses the button and plays the audio file that Dave had also given her.

Calleigh then hears an unknown soft, but firm voice say a little poem, "Mares eat oats, and Doe's eat oats. But little lambs eat ivy."

When she presses stop on the audio recording, she clearly hears the speaker say, "Access Granted."

After the audio file was played, Calleigh hears clicking and gears turning. She clearly hears a latch open, and a portion of the island slowly swings away from the base.

Echo herself comes bounding out to greet this new person. She is a gorgeous young dog. Being only three years old, she is very excited. Calleigh being a native of Louisiana, recognized the breed immediately.

Echo is a Catahoula Leopard Dog, which is the state dog of Louisiana crossed with a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Echo has the characteristic blue, brown spots of the Catahoula, and the ridge of hair growing in the opposite direction on her back of the Ridgeback.

Calleigh can barely read the dog's ID tag with the dog bouncing around all over the place. "Echo" is written boldly across the black hand-tooled leather collar.

Slowly another dog comes out from the room since she is an older dog. "Charlie" is scrawled in a script font on the beautiful mahogany-colored hand-tooled leather collar.

Horatio had asked Calleigh specifically to bring Echo directly to the hospital since he knew that his sister would want to see her partner as soon as she woke up.

Having cleared Echo's arrival with the hospital staff is easy since she is a working police dog and is not considered a pet. The staff has already heard the dog's name before, so they are very eager to meet the canine officer.

As Calleigh walks Echo through the revolving door into the waiting room, the dog slowly and carefully smells Horatio picking up the scent of family. The canine sat perfectly at Horatio's feet.

Echo is trained to only listen to family, and she immediately obeyed Horatio when he tells her to jump up on the chair next to him. While at the hospital, Calleigh volunteers to watch Charlie, Renee's retired Customs dog.

She recently adopted the Chocolate Lab and the tiny Chihuahua that were part of the case that almost killed Horatio when he accidentally overdosed on Fentanyl.

Charlie is close to 11 years old, and she is a beautiful black Belgian Malinois. Charlie is slowing down and very gray around her muzzle. Calleigh can tell immediately that this canine has seen a lot of action and has been through a lot.

Both Charlie and Echo were cross-trained on all facets of police/military work, including drugs, firearms, explosives, search and rescue, cadaver, human smuggling, arson, patrol, and protection.

There were no dogs better at the work that they did since the canines caught 99.9% of illegal activity that they came across in their sector. Drug cartels and terrorists alike wanted both the canines and their trainer out of the way.


	4. Chapter: A Tale of Two Scenes

Chapter: 4  
A Tale of Two Scenes

There are two crime scenes. The secondary crime scene doesn't have a lot. Mainly the wench with the rope that Horatio had cut. Ryan swabs the end of the rope for epithelial's. There is also the eye screw embedded into the concrete. The largest piece of evidence is the blood pool below where Renee had been hanging by her wrists.

The primary crime scene is Renee's house. The house looks trashed with broken picture frames and shattered lamps along with destroyed furniture, and bullet holes in the walls. The evidence shows definite signs of struggle with blood pools and blood smears all over the walls, floor, and furniture.

Calleigh and Eric take swabs of every single bloodstain in the house. The team is hoping that some of the blood is from one of her attackers. Some of the blood is on the shattered glass of a coffee table.

With Horatio at the hospital, the team needs to follow the evidence through to the end. Natalia, the team's DNA expert who had transferred from the FBI, analyzes the blood evidence at both the warehouse and the household.

Ryan's running the trace evidence at the warehouse, and Eric's running point. Walter's the team's go-between. He is going from the lab and crime scenes to Horatio at the hospital. He was keeping his boss up to date on any new development with the case. Calleigh is responsible for the ballistic evidence.

The ballistics are all at Renee's house, and they are all over. In the living room and all down the living room hall, 45 ACP bullets are sticking out of the walls. Calleigh finds several full .357 magazines stashed all over Renee's house. One under the coffee table, one under the couch, and even one tucked into the side table. Calleigh can't help but think, " This woman is definitely prepared for the worst-case scenario."

Near the bookcase is a 9mm slug in the wall with blood spray all around it. It was of high velocity, so Calleigh can determine that it came from a through and through gunshot wound since the bullet is in the middle of the splatter.

Natalia runs the blood from the through and through, and it comes back as Renee's. Along the opposite side of the room is the dead body of one of Renee's attackers. He is hit in the chest, and it doesn't go through, so Calleigh will have to wait until Dr. Tom Loman removes it during the man's autopsy.

First Loman, has to run the dead attackers DNA through CODIS. The ID was easy to get since CODIS spat out a name within minutes. The attacker that Renee shot and killed is ID'ed as "Grayson Clark." Grayson is a well-known mercenary.

Calleigh can see that Renee had been shot with a 9mm. Half-way to the kitchen down the hallway from the living room is a single bullet hole in the wall surrounded by high-velocity blood splatter. There is a bullet hole but no bullet.

There, however, is clear evidence that someone dug out the slug and removed it. Calleigh thinks to herself that whoever it is that Renee shot took out the bullet and must have taken it with them.

The trace evidence that Ryan processes from her house show that Renee did not go quietly and fought like hell to not be taken. Ryan ID'ed several locations in her house where a severe altercation had taken place.

Ryan finds some glass that was found inside Grayson's head, and hands came from the shattered coffee table in the living room from when Renee threw Grayson into the coffee table smashing it.

Calleigh can determine that the gun found on Grayson did not shoot Renee. She had been hit with a Smith and Wesson 9mm, and the gun found on him is a Glock 30.

One of the sites is where she had been shot by an unknown attacker. When she is shot, Renee goes down but forces herself back on her feet to keep fighting.

Her attackers finally overwhelm her by tasing her with a Taser. Calleigh thinks to herself, "That's cheating, tasing someone that you can not beat."  
Dr. Loman can remove the slug that killed the attacker at Renee's house. He had been shot with Renee's Sig Sauer P-226 .357.

The Sig Sauer P-226 can fire four different types of bullets with conversions; a 9mm, a 40 Smith and Wesson, a 357, and a 22 long rifle, but Renee used 357's.  
Nineteen of the bullets that are pulled from her walls and furniture are traced back to her Sig. Renee managed not only to empty her gun's magazine, but she is able to reload and empty that magazine as well. That would have been twenty-one shots that are linked to her gun. That number sounds right to Calleigh.

A Sig Sauer holds ten rounds in each magazine, and if Renee is like most other officers, she keeps one round always in the chamber. They know that she emptied two magazines since they found one empty Sig magazine at the scene and found her Sig on the floor.  
When Calleigh had checked the gun to clear it, she finds the firearm to be empty like the magazine on the ground. The firearms chamber is also clear of any rounds.

When Calleigh finished the firearms tests, she cleans Renee's gun since she could obviously tell that Renee is obsessive about her gun maintenance.

The team just needs to name the person who shot the gun that went through Renee's shoulder and into her wall. The dead one of the attackers never got a shot off since she killed him before he could even clear the holster meaning his gun was still holstered.


	5. Chapter: Blast From The Past

Chapter: 5  
Blast From the Past

Horatio has Ryan leak to the media that Renee died. Horatio knows that if they believe that she survived, they will try again, and that time they might not be able to save her.

He isn't willing to lose her now that he found her, so he has Renee put into protective custody, this means that she has an armed guard outside her room plus Horatio with his Sig Sauer P-229 9mm.

When the media is made aware of what took place, they try to paint the story, so Horatio looks responsible. They bring up the fact that he is connected to several people close to him getting either shot or killed. First Horatio's brother, then his coworker Speedle gets shot.

Then Eric gets shot in the head, but somehow survives. Finally, his wife gets shot and killed shortly after she married him. Now his sister is assaulted and killed, Horatio has to be cursed or something.  
The media would have a point except that nobody knew Horatio and Renee were related until she was assaulted.

"Local police K-9 handler was abducted in home invasion turned kidnapping. She was found and rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. Lieutenant Horatio Caine, her brother, is familiar with shootings. First, his brother and co-worker then his wife now his sister," was the news network's tagline.

A few floors up, Piper and her father are watching Forensic Files when their show is interrupted for the breaking news story. The breaking story gets both of them very worried. Horatio is the person that saved Piper's life and how he had just lost his sister.

Piper asks her father a very touching question, "Is there anything that we can do for him, daddy?"

As she was asking her dad that question, they hear that Horatio is downstairs in the ER. Piper and her daddy rush to the elevator to go down and give their friend their condolences.

When Horatio hears a pair of very familiar voices, he runs out of his sister's room to talk to them. He doesn't want to risk someone finding out that Renee is still alive.

When Piper sees her hero, she runs up to him and gives him the hug of all hugs. She doesn't say anything; the girl just holds him tight. Horatio knows that Piper and her dad had heard about his sister's supposed death and are concerned about their friend during this time.

Horatio's last major case was Piper's shooting. He only left the hospital a few days ago, but now he was back. Horatio is grateful that he wasn't alone since Eric had left to work Renee's case.

Piper and her dad stay with Horatio in the Emergency Room waiting room until Eric came back.

Echo and Horatio by now have become very much like family. Whenever Horatio is asleep in Renee's hospital room, Echo stands guard and protects both her partner and now this new person who smelled like her partner.

Dogs have a sense of smell many times stronger than men. A canine's olfactory system can pick up on odors that most man-made equipment can miss. This is why Echo can pick up on the fact that her partner is related to this new person that Echo has officially never met. The three of them have worked cases together, but the dog has never smelled Horatio directly.

He can't quite understand it, but Horatio trusts the dog more than he trusts his own senses.

Echo, and he had developed a deep mutual understanding and trust with each other. That trust is why Horatio knows something is off about the new member of Renee's protective custody detail when Echo lets out an almost inaudible growl. So quiet someone else might have overlooked it.

Horatio has never met this new officer before. Echo lifts her head and jumps off Renee's bed in a blink of an eye. She runs to the doorway and will not let this new person enter. Horatio is surprised that this ordinarily quiet and sweet dog could be able to let out an almost primitive wolf-like snarl.

Now Echo is an active duty police dog, but when she doesn't have her vest and badge on, she is just the dog next door. Echo will let just about everyone else come inside the room with only a silent head lift, but this person is different.

Horatio tells this new person to stand back and do not enter, or he will let go of Echo. Telling the officer, "get back and don't come any closer, or I will release the dog, and you will be bit."

The new officer freezes in his tracks. Even people looking at their third strike tend to give up without a fight when threatened with a police canine. Horatio needs to have Ryan run this new person's information and make sure that he is who he says he is.

Ryan quickly confirms that this officer is NOT who he said he is. Ryan tells Horatio that the officer who's ID and badge he is looking at was found shot dead in his house a few hours earlier.

When he hears that Horatio wordlessly pulls his Sig Sauer from his holster on his right hip and lets go of a snarling Echo with his left hand.

Horatio quickly tells her to let go of this suspect, with the traditional release command of "Aus" or out in German. However, he wants the dog to know that she was right, and therefore she is a good girl.  
The suspect is very fast to flip on his boss when Horatio threatens to let Echo loose again.

The two people sit quietly, waiting for H's team to get there to take the suspect into custody. Echo just sits opposite the person and stares at him.

Eric comes very quickly to get the suspect back to the police station. Eric finds himself quietly laughing when the suspect begs him to keep the beast away from him when Eric knows that Echo isn't anything like a beast.

After roughly two months of being in a medically induced coma and with daily MRI's to check her brain's swelling. Her doctors finally see enough swelling reduction that they felt comfortable slowly weaning her off of the Pentobarbital that is keeping Renee in the coma.

They take a week to wean her off the drugs. Soon it is up to her when to wake up. Nothing was keeping her in the coma. Since Renee is easily breathing on her own, her doctors remove her intubation when they wean her off the Pentobarbital.

Horatio can only wait and trust that she will choose to wake up. There isn't anything that he wants more than to hug his long lost sister and help her heal. Echo is there all the time, but besides her, Horatio is alone in the hospital.

Eric and the team came by often and kept him company. Alexx, Tripp, and Tom even came by to sit with Horatio, but they would leave since they all have a family away from the team.

However, all of Horatio's blood family and all of Renee's family are dead. It is just her and her dogs. One of her canines is there at the hospital with him at all times.

Sometimes when Calleigh would come, she would bring her kids and Charlie with her. She brings Renee's retired canine more often then she brings her kids. Calleigh wants the canine to know that her partner is alive and that they will be reunited as soon as Renee wakes up again.


	6. Chapter: A Canines Sixth Sense

Echo and Horatio by now have become very much like family. Whenever Horatio is asleep in Renee's hospital room Echo stands guard and protects both her partner and now this new person who smelled like her partner.

Dogs have a sense of smell many times stronger than man. A canine's olfactory system can pick up on odors that most man-made equipment can miss. This is why Echo can pick up on the fact that her partner is related to this new person that Echo has officially never met. The three of them have worked cases together, but the dog has never smelled Horatio directly.

He can't quite understand it, but Horatio trusts the dog more than he trusts his own senses.

Echo, and he had developed a deep mutual understanding and trust with each other. That trust is why Horatio knows something is off about the new member of Renee's protective custody detail when Echo lets out an almost inaudible growl. So quiet someone else might have overlooked it.

Horatio has never met this new officer before. Echo lifts her head and jumps off Renee's bed in a blink of an eye. She runs to the doorway and will not let this new person enter. Horatio is surprised that this ordinarily quiet and sweet dog could be able to let out an almost primitive wolf-like snarl.

Now Echo is an active duty police dog, but when she doesn't have her vest and badge on, she is just the dog next door. Echo will let just about everyone else come in the room with only a silent head lift, but this person is different.

Horatio tells this new person to stand back and do not enter, or he will let go of Echo. Telling the officer, "get back and don't come any closer, or I will release the dog, and you will be bit."

The new officer freezes in his tracks. Even people looking at their third strike tend to give up without a fight when threatened with a police canine. Horatio needs to have Ryan run this new person's information and make sure that he is who he says he is.

Ryan quickly confirms that this officer is NOT who he said he is. Ryan tells Horatio that the officer who's ID and badge he is looking at was found shot dead in his house a few hours earlier.

When he hears that Horatio wordlessly pulls his Sig Sauer from his holster on his right hip and let go of a snarling Echo with his left hand.

Horatio quickly tells her to let go of this suspect, with the traditional release command of "Aus" or out in German. However, he wants the dog to know that she was right, and therefore she is a good girl.

The suspect is very fast to flip on his boss when Horatio threatens to let Echo loose again.

The two people sit quietly, waiting for H's team to get there to take the suspect into custody. Echo just sits opposite the person and stares at him.

Eric comes very quickly to get the suspect back to the police station. Eric finds himself quietly laughing when the suspect begs him to keep the beast away from him when Eric knows that Echo isn't anything like a beast.

After roughly two months of being in a medically induced coma and with daily MRI's to check her brain's swelling. Her doctors finally see enough swelling reduction that they felt comfortable slowly weaning her off of the Pentobarbital that is keeping Renee in the coma.

They take a week to wean her off the drugs. Soon it is up to her when to wake up. Nothing was keeping her in the coma. Since Renee is easily breathing on her own, her doctors remove her intubation when they wean her off the Pentobarbital.

Horatio can only wait and trust that she will choose to wake up. There isn't anything that he wants more than to hug his long lost sister and help her heal. Echo is there all the time, but besides her, Horatio is alone in the hospital.

Eric and the team came by often and kept him company. Alexx, Tripp, and Tom even came by to sit with Horatio, but they would leave since they all have a family away from the team.

However, all of Horatio's blood family and all of Renee's family are dead. It is just her and her dogs. One of her canines is there at the hospital with him at all times.

Sometimes when Calleigh would come, she would bring her kids and Charlie with her. She brings Renee's retired canine more often then she brings her kids. Calleigh wants the canine to know that her partner is alive and that they will be reunited as soon as Renee wakes up again.


	7. Chapter: Siblings Finally Meet

Chapter: 6  
Siblings Finally Meet

Horatio spends all day every day sitting in a chair that the nurses brought him on Renee's left side by his sister's bedside. This repeats for two weeks. It is no surprise that he finds himself falling asleep with the right side of his head on the left side of her bed.

After about two hours of him sleeping on her bed, he feels someone touch the left side of his face. Who could do that since he is the only person not in a coma in the room? Looking around, it takes a few minutes looking around the room for Horatio to realize that he is not the only person awake in the room anymore.

Just as it dawns on Horatio that she is awake, he feels Renee squeeze his hand. He fell asleep with his left hand firmly and lovingly, holding her left hand across her body. Renee smiles softly at her brother, her icy blue eyes meet his ocean blue eyes, and they just smiled at each other.

"God...You're awake," he tells her. "I know somebody else who is going to be happy to see you're awake."  
Before he can call her, Echo jumps back up on Renee's bed. Echo had been sleeping on the floor for a change that particular morning. The dog is beside herself with an infectious joy. Horatio finds himself smiling and laughing before he can stop himself. He has to keep the dog as calm as possible so she will not pull Renee's IV's out.

When his sister attempts to talk, Horatio stops her, "Shhh... don't try and talk until the doctor comes in and checks you out, sweetie." He then, without another word, presses the nurse call button.

The doctors quickly come into the room and are completely surprised to see her not only awake, but she is attempting to talk. They didn't think that she would be so aware.

Finally, after two and a half months, the two long lost siblings can talk. There is so much to say, and so many questions unanswered.

The most important question as far as Horatio is concerned with was, "What happened?" Horatio asks that question to his half-sister.

Now Renee completely understands why he is asking that vital question first. Catching up can wait until they solve her attack. She answers his question as quickly and concise as she can. With Echo curled up next to her on the hospital bed, she starts to explain everything that happened to her in a whispery and shaky voice.

"Before I say anything between us, please call me Nae, my mom, and my friends always call me Nae."

"Now that we have that out of the way, I can give you my testimony. I was at my house and had barely put the dogs in the panic room for the night and locked it when I heard something in the living room. I drew my Sig, and then I proceeded to investigate. I had just announced I was MDPD when I felt somebody grab me from behind. I back up quickly, slamming the attacker into the wall."

"Whoever it was, they let go because I knocked the wind out of them. I pick up my dropped pistol and spin around to see another person come to the defense of the first person. I pull the trigger about ten times over a few minutes, but I keep missing them."

"The first person manages to get behind me again, and the second one tries to grab me from the front as well. I fire my gun. I don't know why I keep missing."

"Grabbing one of the full magazines that I keep throughout the house, I quickly reload. I fire my gun eight more times, but I keep missing. I don't understand why I keep missing. I never miss a shot."

"I managed to hurl the first one over my shoulders and through the glass coffee table when he attempts to grab me from behind again. He's knocked out for a little while. The second guy rushes me, but I shoot him in the shoulder. I know that that shot was a through and through since I see his blood splatter on the wall."

"The first guy gets up, and I managed to shoot him at center mass. The second guy shoots me in the shoulder. I go down but force myself back up. I know I'm out of ammo, but I stand my ground facing the second guy when I suddenly experience a burning in my side, and I hit the floor out cold."

"I must have missed someone. I wake up tied and hanging from the ceiling of some warehouse. I think that I was over water. Then I feel intense pain then pass out again. I come to a second time in a different area of a warehouse."

"The people that attacked me kept asking me the same question over and over again. They wanted me to tell them where Echo and Charlie were."

"They kept saying that the price on my head was less than half the price on each of my partners were. I would sooner die than tell them where the dogs were, but I was fighting to stay conscious."

"They hit me with a metal pipe breaking both of the bones in my arm since I heard the snaps then ask that question once more. I wouldn't answer so they broke the other arm still I wouldn't answer. They broke both my legs since I heard the snaps, they then bust all my ribs asking me that same question. In a rage, they start beating me in the head."

"I hurt everywhere. I never caved in; I resisted their torture. I remember you coming in. I remember you talking to me. I remember you holding me and cutting me down. I remember you shining a light in my eyes, and the next thing I know, I open my eyes to see you sleeping soundly with your head on my bed."

She completed her testimony with, "I know I could pick the one that I had shot from a lineup."


	8. Chapter: Renee's Secret

Chapter: 7  
Renee's Secret

Renee is not able to remain awake very long after she talks to Horatio. Waking up from a coma and giving her testimony had been too much for her, and she very quickly fell asleep, rolling over to her left side.

Renee sleeps peacefully all through that first night that she was awake with her brother trying to comfort her in the only way that he knows how. When he starts to rub her back softly, he feels long, deep scars from the base of her neck to the small of her back.

Gently moving the back of her hospital gown, he is horrified to see deep and massive scar tissue covering her whole back.

He can't imagine what could have caused such deep tissue damage to his baby sister. When the nurse comes in to check her vitals, Horatio points out the scars and asks her if she knows what had happened to his sister.

The nurse told him that she would send in the doctor to talk to Horatio and see if they can figure out what happened and if there is anything that they can do to relieve any discomfort or pain with his sister.

"Renee has full-thickness chemical or acid burns that go all the way down through her nerves. The burns aren't the only trauma that she had sustained on her back.

She also has clear signs of a cattail being used on her. The cattail was used at the same time as the acid or chemical. A cattail is a leather whip where the many ends are tipped with broken glass, sharp bones, or sharp rocks that dig and tear whatever it hits."

"All the nerves on her back are dead. Renee feels no pain from her back. That being said, she can be shot in her back, and she will not know it. You need to keep an eye on her and tell the staff if you notice anything new on her back even after she gets released from the hospital," is what her doctor tells an anxious Horatio.

His baby sister was tortured before with scars as deep and old as these are. Part of him doesn't want to know what happened to her, but an even bigger part of him desperately wants to make it all go away. Wishing he was able to erase all the trauma that she had gone through.

"Nobody should have been through what she has to go through," he tells himself. He sat on the edge of her bed and watched his sister sleep quietly, thinking to himself.

Horatio is beyond angry upon discovering what happened, but he is also impressed with how strong she is. As soon as she wakes up in the morning, he reassures her that Charlie is okay and safe, as well as that Echo never left her side for very long the whole time that Renee had been unconscious.

The next morning her doctors come in to speak to Renee about the severity of her head trauma. Her skull had been permanently shattered by the beating she had survived going through.

The doctors have allowed the swelling to go down, and they hoped that her skull would heal but no such fate. Some of the fragments of her skull were dying. She needs to have most of her skull replaced with metal plates and pins.

They wanted to wait and see if she would ever wake up before they put the plates in her head. With her now awake, it was apparent that she is a fighter and is going to survive, so the doctors wanted to put the plates and pins in her skull.

Renee's skull reconstruction surgery was about 24 hours. In essence, the surgeon has to put large plates in her skull and remove the shattered bone fragments of her broken bones in her skull. The crown of her head was salvageable with smaller plates to stabilize the bones. However, the sides of her skull were unrepairable.

Her cheekbones and eye sockets healed on their own. Her broken jaw, along with her shattered nose, also healed on their own. The surgeons wrapped her head with gauze to protect her incisions. When she comes out of surgery, Horatio has Calleigh bring Charlie to the hospital so that the dog can reunite with her partner and his sister.

Echo and Charlie are both just thrilled to greet their mom finally. Calleigh tells Renee softly, "Don't worry, sweetie. I will keep Charlie safe with me until you are back on your feet and ready to take her. But Horatio will probably want you to go stay with him until everything dies down and we catch the people who put a price on your head and your canine's heads."


	9. Chapter: A Sister Moves In

Chapter: 8  
Sister Moves In

With physical therapy and her brother's help, Renee is on her feet relatively fast after she wakes up. She is still at the hospital and is sitting up on her own. Physical therapy has her walking with the help of a spotter and a metal hand railing. Horatio's team still has a crime to solve since they have hit roadblocks, and the case had gone a little cold.

While Renee is now awake and able to talk, the team has renewed hope to reignite the case. They hope that maybe Renee can give a detailed description of the suspects that attacked her. When Renee tells the team that she would be able to describe her attackers accurately to the police sketch artist, the team is more than thrilled.

When the sketch artist is sitting with Renee and drawing what her attackers look like Horatio thought that one of them seems very familiar to him. She can describe the two people that beat her, and one of them is the person who had shot her. Eric put the sketches of the suspects into the system for facial recognition. Horatio is not surprised by the results of one of them.

The one that had shot Renee, David Kolcheck, is the suspected leader of a group of Serbian Mercenaries. He is very familiar to the team since they had been trying to nail him for murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and attempted murder for quite a while.

The team had arrested Kolcheck on multiple occasions, but they never had enough to nail him with until now. This time he attacked the wrong person and made this case more personal to Horatio than any other case. He tries not to let any cases become personal, but in this case, he couldn't help it. Nothing is going to stop him from solving this case.

The sketches of her attackers are shown to the news media in the hopes that the general public would be able to find her attackers. The team can only wait and hope that someone calls in a tip to the hotline.

While still at the hospital, Renee sits bolt upright when she remembers that at her house, she had installed hidden security cameras. She had already turned them on for the night that she was attacked.

The cameras would have caught it all on camera. This could provide the team with some added detail. Maybe even identify some missing forensic evidence that they might have missed.

Renee tells her brother about the surveillance cameras she had put in a few weeks before she was attacked. Horatio said to his sister, Sweetie; the attackers had shot the outside surveillance cameras before they make their entry."

Still, she insists, "You don't understand H. I installed hidden cameras inside the light fixtures. Equipped with low light resolution and night vision."

Calleigh has Benton accompany her back to the house to have access to Renee's hidden cameras. It is a closed-circuit system, so Benton needs to be at the house to get the footage.

When Benton gets his hands on the footage, he does see the entire assault. Unfortunately, the footage is in night vision, which is all green. He isn't sure he can get anything usable for the case.

With Renee medically able to walk but needing assistance and physical therapy to do it, Horatio insists that she and the dogs move in with him so he can help.

She is very reluctant to do that but ultimately relents and agrees on the condition that he doesn't let her interfere with his work.

Horatio then realizes that he will never win the argument, so he accepts his sister's counteroffer.

Renee is powerful in all aspects of the word. She doesn't let her physical limitations stop her from doing as much for herself as she can. With this characteristic, she does overdo it on occasion.

The physical therapist would come over to the house every other day and give her exercises to strengthen her legs, but Renee's real motivation to get better is Charlie and Echo. Her dogs need her there. They require her leadership to thrive.

To kill time, Renee starts to teach, Echo how to find and alert to forensic evidence. Being a very young and active working dog, Echo needs constant mental stimulation to not only survive but to thrive.

So with her brother's help, Renee gets Echo alerting to shell casings as well as finding evidence that will link a victim to the suspect.

Echo's nose can detect amounts of blood and other trace evidence that no human could. Amounts so small only a microscope would be able to find. Soon she is alerting to 99% of the evidence that Horatio's team set up in mock trials.

Renee wants to thank Horatio for helping her through all of it. For being there for a person, he never met who ends up being a long lost sister. She is going to get in contact with Echo's breeder in Louisiana and acquire a full-bred Catahoula puppy to donate to the CSI team.

She will personally train the dog to do all aspects of the work the team will need.

Every five years, Echo's breeder would breed one litter of Catahoula Leopard Dog crossed with the Rhodesian Ridgeback to sell to NOPD to work in their K-9 program. Since Echo is three, he is not due for a cross litter for two more years.

When Renee calls the breeder, he tells her that he has a little boy who has all the makings of a great working dog. The breeder tells Renee that the puppy is a little boy version of Echo. The pup has Echos personality but is the reverse color pattern.

As soon as she hears that, Renee agrees to buy the pup. When the breeder hears about what had happened to her and why she wants the puppy even though she still had many working years left with Echo, he tells her that he will not sell the puppy but will instead donate the puppy to the MDPD for use as a forensic evidence detection canine.

After she hears that Renee is filled with gratitude and tells him thank you very much for your generosity. This gift will have to wait for a while since the pup is only about a month old, and Renee still needs to get well enough to be able to walk on her own without any assistance.

The breeder will always keep the pups who are destined to do tracking until the pups are nine months to a year old. He wants to get the pups ready by training them young and early to track through the bayou. They also need to solve her attack.  
Horatio is starting to get discouraged by the lack of forward momentum in the case. Renee, however, is always permanently optimistic. Renee's personality closely matches Calleigh and her personality. By this time, the two are becoming good friends.

Renee tells Horatio that they will get a lead soon, and sure enough, the team gets an anonymous call identifying a group of Serbian Mercenaries who are bragging at a local biker bar about attacking a police officer and beating her to death when the cop wouldn't give up her partners location.

This leads to an entirely different predicament. This means that even if they catch the Serbian Mercenaries, they still will not give up the person who had hired them. The Mercenaries probably don't even know who hired them. They are just hired, hitmen.

The new development means that the case just got a whole lot more complicated.

The anonymous caller tells the tip line the name of the bar that the Serbian Mercenaries were bragging in. Horatio and the team are all too familiar with this particular bar.

The team busted several drug dealers dealing out of the bar. They know that they can't just burst through the door and demand answers. The CSI's would need both a warrant and a lot of reinforcements.

Reinforcements are easy enough for Tripp to get since Renee is a cop, and cops take care of their own. The team doesn't think that they have solid enough evidence to get a warrant.

They need more than just an anonymous tip to who the attackers are. The team requires physical evidence that points to the attackers' identity.

Renee reminds the team that they still have a missing bullet. She tells the team that she shot one of the attackers. She goes on telling her brother's team that she trained Echo to alert to DNA evidence.

This gives Horatio a genius idea. He wants to take Echo back to the house and see if she can find the missing DNA evidence.

The team is hopeful that the canine can find the evidence that they have yet found. That being the missing through and through bullet from the attacker that Renee had shot.

Horatio is very hopeful since he knows Renee loads her gun every night, and her DNA will be on the bullet as well as the DNA of the person that she shot. He needs Renee's help to tell him how to ask the dog to search.

Renee already taught Echo to listen to Horatio while she was recuperating at her brother's house. This will be a test to see if Horatio and Echo can work together to solve a case.

With a few hours left of daylight, Renee hands her brother a bullet from her gun inside an evidence bag and tells him first to get a sample of the suspect's blood and put the two scents together in a single evidence bag.

Horatio now just needs to take the canine to her house, where he is instructed to have Echo take a good sniff with the command, "Seek."

This will send Echo smelling around until she hopefully locates the missing spent bullet.

Horatio hopes that Ryan will be able to find usable DNA from the person who was shot as well as Renee's fingerprints since she loads her gun.

Horatio's idea turns out to be pure genius. Within minutes of being at her house, Echo performs just as Horatio had hoped.

She pinpoints the exact location of the bullet ten times faster than any of Horatio's lab equipment could have been able to do it. The slug had been dug out of the wall. It was either dropped and kicked, or it had been thrown. That causes the bullet to roll into the heater vent clear on the other side of the room.

The DNA that Ryan can get from the bullet that Renee had fired through the shoulder of one of her attackers matches Kolcheck as one of Renee's attackers.

This new evidence can secure Horatio the search warrant that the team needs to search the bar and the entire property since Kolcheck is reported to live in a trailer at the back of the property.


	10. Chapter: The Warrant

Chapter: 9  
The Warrant

Horatio isn't expecting to find the suspect at the trailer, but when the team approached it, someone opens fire on the team.

Thankfully whoever it was that is shooting at them misses. Horatio signals to Eric that he is going to sneak around the back of the trailer. Horatio needs Eric to provide a distraction so he can flank the suspect. Eric gives his brother cover fire to allow H to approach without fear of getting shot.

Horatio gets behind the shooter and kicks in the back door taking the shooter by surprise. "Put your weapon down and put your hands up," Horatio tells the shooter.

This is immediately followed by a "Don't do it... don't do…"

Horatio is forced to shoot their only lead when the suspect attempts to shoot H and make a run for it.

Instantly Eric busts in the trailer front door and is hoping that Horatio is the one who had fired the gun and is not the one who was shot.

Horatio looks up at his brother before he says,

"They never listen."

After Natalia runs the suspect through CODIS, the team gets some unsuspected news. Horatio had shot a person by the name of Samuel Wright.

The person that Horatio shot is not who they thought he was. Samuel is, however, involved in both the kidnapping and the torture of Renee. He might not be Kolcheck; he is still guilty.

Natalia can match Samuel's DNA to the DNA that Ryan pulls off of the rope that Renee had been tied and tortured by.

Now it is two down and one to go since the person Horatio had arrested at the hospital was not one of her attackers. He was rather someone the leader had hired to clean up the mess. This case was not going to be an easy one to solve.

Walter is getting a little tired of going back and forth between the hospital and the crime lab, so Ryan takes over being the team's go-between. Horatio understands, and he does miss his co-workers, but Eric is the one that Horatio misses the most.

Since Eric is the team's leader while Horatio is out of commission, Eric can't go to the hospital. Horatio does trust his team implicitly, but he would rather be at the lab.

However, Horatio will never leave his baby sister at the hospital alone since they are all each other had. Ryan called Horatio to see if his sister is awake enough to look at some photos and try to ID her attackers from the warehouse and her house. They want to find out if her attackers at both scenes are the same or if they are different.

When Renee looks at the photo array that Ryan gives her, she inadvertently holds her breath.

Horatio asks his sister, "Do you recognize someone in the array."

Without a word, she nods yes. She is pointing out the person they had attempted to apprehend the night before at the trailer as her shooter.

She also points out someone else that is not yet on the team's radar as one of her attackers at the warehouse.

Renee tells her brother that this person she remembers trying to get her to tell them where the dogs were at the warehouse.

She had two people who were trying to get her to tell them where her canine partners were being held. She, however, would not say, and her attackers were getting very angry that they could not break her.

Her interrogators didn't know that she was a former Marine, and she was trained to withstand even the worst type of torture. There was no way that these people would be able to get her to talk.

Quietly she motions to her brother that she wants to tell him something that she doesn't want Ryan to hear about. Horatio gets close to her as she whispers in his ear. "This is the actual leader of the group," she says as she points to the second person.

The person that she is pointing at isn't yet on the team's radar. "He is the person who asked me the question as to where Echo and Charlie were the other guys would hit me when he told them to and only if he told them where to hit me."

Horatio was a little confused as to why she would whisper this? Why would she not want Ryan to hear the information?

When Horatio notices who she is pointing to, he is a little confused. That is not the leader of the Serbian Mercenaries. The first person that Renee pointed at gives the team the evidence that Horatio was praying for.

They finally have enough evidence to nail the Mercenaries. They know that Renee will be more than happy to testify against this person and that she will not be intimidated by anyone. She is just like her brother Horatio, not easily scared off of doing what is right.

Watching his sister sleeping peacefully, Horatio thinks to himself, "God, she reminds me so much of myself. If I had only known she was my sister, she would have never been alone."  
He is quietly kicking himself for something that in no way is his fault.

Eric and the team are making headway, but not as much as Horatio would have liked. Walter has an epiphany. He realizes that they just need to follow the money if the suspects are not talking.

Eric and Tripp round up the bar patrons that know who it is that bragged about killing a cop. The suspects, however, can neither confirm nor deny they know who it is that hired them to question and kill Renee and take the dogs. The mercs are really after the dogs. The price on their heads is much higher than the price on her head.

The price on the dogs is alive, but Renee's is dead or alive. Since she was never going to give the dogs up, they just lose it and beat her to "death." They, however, really want the dogs too. Horatio is sure that the attackers are still after the canines.

With Renee's permission, Horatio wants to use the dogs as bait. Renee is not too sure about using her partners as bait to get the mercs, but the team is running out of ideas, so she relents. Horatio is going to use the dogs to draw out the people who want her dead.

Benton, the teams AV guy, goes onto the dark web and responds to the price on the dog's head. "I know where the dogs are, I'll give you them for a price," is the message that he put up on the website.


	11. Chapter: The Sting

Renee is not thrilled about not being there to watch her dogs backs and protect them. She is going to have to trust this team that she doesn't know. She trusts her brother with her life but is not sure about the others.

Before the undercover operation, Horatio pulls Renee aside and reassures her the dogs will be in his field of vision the whole time. He knows how much she loves her canine partners and the length she will go to protect them.

Since Renee is still predominantly resigned to a walker and the bad guys still think that she is dead, going with the team is out of the question.

Renee is putting every ounce of trust that she has on a team of people that she has no reason to trust. The simple truth is that her brother trusts them, and that will have to be enough for her.  
Horatio needs someone to go undercover as the seller. The only person to came to his mind was Jake Berkeley. Jake is Calleigh's ex-boyfriend and is an MDPD undercover cop who has worked with Horatio's team successfully on several occasions.

Horatio gets Jake's location from the Undercover Officers' boss, and the team does a mock raid on the location.

As soon as Jake sees it is Horatio, he has to get separated from his group and be taken back under arrest. This way, the people he is with will not know that he is undercover and therefore maintain his cover.

To do this, he takes a swing at Horatio. Luckily for Jake, H knows what he is trying to do and arrests him for assaulting a police officer. If Horatio didn't know what Jake was trying to do, Jake might have gotten shot.

Once at the precinct, Jake is free to talk. When Horatio fills him in on the job he has to do, Jake is all in. He knows Renee from his last undercover gig when he was helping her bust a drug gang smuggling cocaine.

Renee and Echo were working a joint undercover operation with VICE. Jake was the undercover officer planted deep in a drug cartel's network. Renee and Echo were the officers who busted Jake and the crew. In fact, Echo had saved Jake during the operation.

The cartel leader found out that Jake was a cop and was getting ready to execute him. When Echo and Renee bust in, the dog takes a chunk out of the cartel leader's arm. Jake feels that he owes Renee and Echo a great deal. He is more than willing to do whatever is needed to save her and her canine.

The job is simple since he just has to take the dogs to a warehouse and meet with the Serbian Mercenaries. Horatio will always be within eyesight of the dogs.

This is the only way to get the bad guys who are the actual people who had attempted to grab his sister. They were the ones who tortured her to get information on the dog's location.

With both Echo and Charlie within eyesight and Jake on com's, Horatio has all the exits in control. Tripp, with the help of his most trusted MDPD officers, has the entire perimeter in lockdown.

There is only one way in and out because Horatio is not going to put his sister Renee's canine partners Echo and Charlie at risk. Renee is living at Horatio's house while she recovers from her violent beating and attack. Horatio promises to call home as soon as the operation is complete, so she will not worry.

The Mercenaries drive up in a late model black Ford Bronco. When all four doors open and five people get out, Horatio is taken off guard. With two mercenaries already dead, it brings the total involved to seven.

Through the coms, Horatio tells the group of officers standing by to focus on the driver since he is probably the group's leader.

The entire team of Horatio's are waiting for Jake to receive the money, but before he hands the dogs over to the Serbs.

The instant that Jake has the money Horatio in his police issue hummer drive up with the lights on but the sirens off so the Serbs wouldn't hear them.

Stepping out of the Hummer, Horatio pulls out his Sig Sauer aiming it at the leader before telling him, "Put the weapon down and place your hands behind your head; don't move."

To his complete and total surprise, the Serbian Mercenaries all dropped their weapons and came in quietly.

Horatio is expecting them to get into a shootout. When they don't, he is able to breathe a sigh of relief as he calls his sister to tell her that they have taken the Serbian Mercenaries into custody without a single shot.

Simply having the mercenaries in custody doesn't mean that they will be willing and able to talk.

The leader of the group David Kolcheck is no stranger to Horatio and his team. When he sees that it is Horatio, he responds very cruelly to him. "Lieutenant Caine, to what do I owe the pleasure."

"We have evidence that connects you to the brutal attack and murder of an MDPD police officer," is how Horatio responded.

When David asks a very cold question to Horatio, it took all of his strength to remain calm and not lash out.  
"What do you care about it, you would think that she was your actual family the way you are going on about her."

Without thinking, Horatio hears himself respond with, "She's my baby sister, you son of a bitch."

He doesn't mean for the information to slip, but it does, and there was no way to take it back.

"You killed my sister, and you are going to pay," David demands his lawyer, so all questions stopped.

Walking out of the interview room, Horatio realizes something very damning for David. "I never said the officer was a female. How would Kolcheck know the officer killed is a female?"

Horatio steps out of the room. He doesn't want to do anything that will jeopardize the case and get David Kolcheck released.

As Horatio and his team go over the evidence making sure to cross all the T's and dot all their I's, they realize that David's lawyer might be able to argue away some of the evidence but not all of it.

Ryan finds Renee's DNA on David's watch, and on the bottom of his boots. He walked through her blood at the secondary scene. A shell casing from the attack at her house is found embedded in his shoe tread.

His prints and blood are found on and in the gun. The gun that was found on the dead body at Renee's house.

The final piece of evidence is that the team found David Kolcheck attempting to buy the police dogs from an undercover police officer.

No matter how much it kills Horatio, he is willing to give Kolcheck a deal for the person who hired him to kill his sister as well as her canine partners.

Horatio is willing to take the lethal injection off the table since Kolcheck is facing the death penalty for killing a police officer.

Horatio never told Kolcheck that the cop he was being charged with was NOT Renee but rather a different cop from a few years before. David's DNA had matched DNA from a case that was closed when his subordinate confesses to the crime that Kolcheck had committed.

One of the mercenaries is very quick to turn on David Kolcheck. He had only been hired to help get information from Renee. Charles Canaan confesses to being the one who held the rope when they were interrogating Renee to get her to tell them where the dogs were. Charles and his identical twin were in charge of holding the rope.

Charles tells Horatio everything. "We first tried some Sodium Pentothal. She would give us vague answers to our questions. When we asked her where her canine partners were, she said, (they are somewhere safe). Asking again, we were told (they are locked up safe where they are supposed to be)."

"Getting nowhere with the drug, we attempted electrocution to get answers. She was tough and never gave in. I left, and my brother stayed since they were talking about killing her by beating her to death. I may be a hired hand, but I'm not a murderer."

When we tried to take her off the wire and attempt something else, she slipped and fell about 25 feet. I was quite scared that she was dead until I heard her moan in pain.

We then hung her by her wrists and attempted to get her to tell us where the dogs were. The price on her head was $500,000 dead or alive, but the price on the dog's heads were $1,000,000 each alive.

We wanted the two million for the dogs, not just half a million for her. Kolcheck never told us that she was a cop, but I never asked because I needed the money. I'm so sorry. If you need me to, I will testify, and you don't need to offer me a deal." This was a valuable weapon to keep in his back pocket for Horatio.


	12. Chapter: When Dreams Fight Back

Chapter: 10  
When Dreams Fight Back

When Renee is in the hospital, she is so drugged up with pain killers; she doesn't have any dreams. Now that she is at home in Horatio's house, she is starting to have nightmares. Nothing too bad, but she will wake up in a sweat or twitch herself awake.

Over time, however, the dreams get worse and worse. She is too stubborn to talk about them with her brother even though Horatio repeatedly asks her about her dreams.

Eventually, her dreams get away from her when she has a terrifying flashback to her assault when early one morning, Renee is slowly shuffling barefooted through the carpeted hall into the kitchen when she reaches out and touches the refrigerator door giving herself a good static charge.

This little jolt sends her into a flashback. She was tied up somewhere in a warehouse. She didn't recognize where she was, but she was hanging over a large pool of water.  
Someone somewhere was talking to her, but she couldn't understand what they were saying. She felt a shock of electricity; it hurt so bad.

She isn't aware she was making any noise, but she is yelling with a blood-curdling scream. Horatio is still asleep at the time, and the dogs come running to where she is.

Renee is in a deep trance, so she never hears them come in. Horatio is very frightened by the noise he hears and reaches out to touch her to bring her back to reality. The way that she responds was shocking.

When Horatio reaches out to touch his sisters arm, she spins wildly around fists flying. In her horror driven trance, she makes contact with her brother's face. He doesn't move away but rather brings her into an embrace.

Holding her close and allowing her to fight as long as she needs without hurting herself or him. After about three minutes of her fighting, she collapses sobbing in her brother's loving embrace.

It takes a good ten minutes of her, crying for her to be able to say anything. Between the sobs, she manages to tell her brother that she had just gone through in the painful flashback.

The new memory sends Horatio and the team back to the warehouse to find the new crime scene that they didn't know about. When Eric finds the new crime scene, he is shocked by what he sees.

There deep inside the warehouse is a water tank with a wench that is supposed to be used to move large crates of fish but is instead attached to a metal chair.

Eric finds an exposed live wire making the water and chair electrified. No one can get near the tank with the power still on. Having the electric company cut the power off is a quick phone call, but it takes about ten minutes to do. Once the power is out, Eric and the rest of the team are able to get to the new scene.

Putting the scenes together reveals a whole new timeline of events. First, Renee is attacked in her house and abducted against her will.

Then her assailants tie her to a chair and electrocute her to get information from her. When that doesn't work, they go more hands-on. They take her to a different area of the warehouse to beat the answer out of her.

Unfortunately for them, Horatio and the police force are approaching with their sirens on. The assailants flee through a trap door that the police had never found. How they get out of the warehouse is not important enough for the team to spend any time figuring it out yet.

When Renee has her flashback, she remembers that after she is questioned with electrocution, her attackers accidentally drop her onto the ground. She remembers falling through the air and hitting the ground hard.

Renee tells her brother about the memory elaborates with, "I remember hearing a loud snap of what she thinks was her vertebrae breaking.

Horatio is again shocked by what his little sister had gone through. He is very angry and eager to catch whoever it is that tortured her. He wants someone to pay for doing that to his baby sister and someone that over the last four months, he has grown to love and admire for her strength, tenacity, and sheer will.


	13. Chapter: Renee's Mysterious Past

Chapter: 11  
The Secret Past

While she is lying unconscious and fighting for her life, Horatio has his team do a deep dive for her Marine and her Customs and Border Patrol personnel files.

What Horatio reads is not anything short of incredible. Renee graduated top of her class in the Marine Academy. She didn't allow her drill sergeant to let her do anything different than any of the boys. She told them that if she graduates, she'll do it at the same level as the men.

She could lift two hundred pounds despite her only weighing one hundred ten pounds. She could do five hundred pull up's, and a thousand men's push-ups.

Renee could run ten miles carrying a hundred-pound backpack in less time than the men carrying a fifty-pound backpack. She was stronger and tougher than all the boys. The bulk of her military records were heavily redacted, though.

While in the United States Marine Corps, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, two-Silver Stars, Navy and Marine Corps Medal, two-Bronze Stars, and four Purple Hearts. Renee had a spotless record. She only left the Marine Corps when she had a price put on her head after they had killed her last partner.

When she got stateside, Renee was reunited with one of the first military working dogs she ever trained "Charlie." The canine's previous two handlers were killed in action. Between her previous partners, she worked with Renee until a replacement could get there. Charlie would not listen to anyone but Renee.

Renee tried to match Charlie with a new handler, but she couldn't do it. So when Renee was discharged from the military, Charlie was allowed to retire from the service too. The two of them then joined Customs and Border Patrol.

Her record with the Border Patrol was no less impressive. When she was on patrol, she routinely stopped every shipment of drugs, explosives, money, people, and firearms that smugglers tried to get through the border.

Whether it was by sneaking under cover of night or attempting to throw the dogs off by masking the scent with gasoline or other scents, she and Charlie had managed to stop 99.9% of activity through her port of entry. Her record was perfect.

She only left the Border Patrol when she had another price put on her head. This time the price was also on Charlie's head by the drug cartels in the area.

Renee had transferred to the Miami-Dade Police Department two years before she was attacked. She had tried to keep a low profile in Miami but was not succeeding at it. She was too good of a canine handler, and she was too good at her job.

If Horatio thinks back, he can vaguely remember working a few cases with her. Ryan confirms that they did work a few cases indirectly together.

The cases had been closed, and they got the bad guy. Two cases were missing child cases where Renee's dog had successfully tracked the missing child through the everglades and exposed a child trafficking ring and a kidnapped child in both cases. From what Horatio could remember, the cases were solved in record time.  
Horatio starts back at the lab as soon as Renee is released from the hospital. His sister only agrees to move into Horatio's house with him on the condition that he goes back to work. She will never allow herself to interfere with his work.

Renee knows that the city of Miami needs him just as much as she needs him. She needs her brother but will never admit it.

Horatio is more patient and supportive than she can have imagined. He is always ready and willing to help her when and if she needs it.

Renee, however, is a little too stubborn to accept any help. Being the Marine she was, she is doing more harm than good when it comes to rehabilitation. She is overworking her muscles. Renee continues this behavior until she collapses in the hall. Luckily it is when her brother was at home.


	14. Chapter: The Accident

Chapter: 12  
The Accident

Eight weeks into her ten weeks of department mandated physical therapy, Renee's body finally caught up with her overworked muscles. Her therapist told her to do her exercises for half an hour every day, but Renee didn't listen to her doctor.

Renee completely disregarded what her doctor said and did her exercises for at least an hour, if not more every day.

Renee overworks her body and doesn't eat or drink. She possesses an obsessive personality, and when she hyper focuses on anything, she would forget to eat or drink from a very young age.

This is the only time in her life that her personality quirk is actually very dangerous. Eventually, her body catches up with her personality, and she collapses in Horatio's house. Luckily it happens when her brother is at home with her.

Renee and Horatio just finished watching the movie, Hacksaw Ridge in the living room when Renee gets up to walk down the hall to grab something from her bedroom.

At the moment that she gets to her bedroom door, her legs buckle out from under her. This causes her to fall forwards a little making her bang the wall very loud.

She never has a chance to catch herself since it is at that instant that Renee passed out losing consciousness. This makes her fall back, and in the process, she slams the back of her head into the corner of the thin marble console table that Horatio has in the hall. The fall ends up breaking the corner off of the table.

Horatio didn't notice that Renee left until he hears a very loud banging noise coming from the bedroom hall. The sound startled him quite a bit. With a start, he looks over to where his sister was sitting. He notices that her walker was still standing there where she left it, and Renee is not there.

Seeing her walker where it is and not seeing his sister Horatio starts to panic. Quickly running around the corner of the bedroom hallway, his heart stops.

There right in front of him, he watches his sister fall in slow motion. It was too far away from him to do anything about it. He sees her slam the back of her head into his marble console table, breaking the corner.

His baby sister lands on her back. Her legs are crumpled under her, and her arms are sticking out at strange angles. Renee's eyes are closed, and her face is turned onto the right side of her head.

Rushing over to his sister's side, he tried to wake her up, but he was getting no response from her. He tried shaking her awake, and he tried patting her cheeks too, but nothing was working.

"Nae… Nae... Sweetheart wake up. Come on, baby, open your eyes, sweetie. Wake up, Nae come on wake up," he begs his sister.

By this time, Horatio realizes that his hand that is holding her head is all bloody. He can feel the warmth of the blood run all over his hand. Cautiously and carefully, he turns her head to the left side, and his heart drops because blood is already starting to pool a little under his sister's head.

While he holds her head in his left hand, Horatio reaches for the small penlight that he keeps in the bottom drawer of the console table. He needs to check her eyes' response to light as a way to check for possible brain damage.

He gently lays her head on the floor for him, opens up each of her eyes, and shine the light in her icy blue eyes. He is looking for the eye's response to light.

When he realizes that her eyes are fixed, dilated, and they are unresponsive to light, he knows he has to get her to the hospital as fast as he can.

He can't wait for an ambulance to get there because she doesn't have any time to spare.

Fearing the worst and knowing that he can get her to the hospital faster than the ambulance can Horatio gathers her up in his arms, he rests her head on his shoulder and carries her to his car.

The drive to the hospital seems to take forever. Before Horatio leaves his house, he places her sitting up in the passenger seat then flattens the Hummer's seat down.

Quickly buckling Renee in and slamming the car door careful to keep her hands and feet clear of the closing door. Horatio rushes around to the driver's side, and he revs the engine.

Putting the portable police siren on the roof and turning it on. Horatio drives to the hospital like a bat out of hell. He just has to get to the hospital as fast as physically possible. Peeling out of the driveway, Horatio is thankful that he didn't park his Hummer in the garage that night.

"Nae... Nae... Sweetheart stay with me. Please stay with me, Sweetie. Come on, fight Nae," Horatio pleas with his sister.

Holding her hand the entire time, Horatio is driving a little recklessly, but since it is just after midnight, the Miami side streets are relatively quiet. Driving at 70 miles an hour, it only takes a few minutes to get there.

When he gets to the hospital with an unconscious Renee, Horatio carefully gathers his baby sister in his arms and carries her into the ER.

Her head is hanging backward limply, but he doesn't want to waste time resting her head on his shoulder. Time is of the essence, and she doesn't have any to spare.

Renee doesn't weigh a lot for Horatio to carry only about one hundred ten pounds. She is not tall, only five foot one inch, and he is six foot nothing. Her tiny body is fairly light for him.  
"Help, I have a female in her late thirties. She fell at home, slamming her head into a marble table. When I got to her, she was not responding with pupils that are fixed, dilated, and non-responsive to light. She hasn't regained consciousness. She's an MDPD officer," he finishes explaining to the nurse.

"Get me a gurney. We need to get her into trauma room three stat," the nurse orders the other medical staff.

Horatio tries desperately to stay with his sister as the emergency staff wheel her into the trauma room, but the staff stop him. "Only medical staff are allowed in the trauma room NO exception, we will come and get you when we have her stable," is what the nurses tell him.

With the doctors wheeling, Renee into the emergency room Horatio himself flashes back to the night of her attack. Horatio doesn't hear anything from the nurses for three hours.

Unknown to him, one of the doctors that was in trauma room three was Alexx. By the time one of Renee's doctors comes out to talk to him, he was beyond nervous. Relief floods across his face as he rushes to the doctor.  
Horatio begs the doctor for any news.

"Please… Tell me she's okay," he pleas with her doctor.

Horatio quietly prays. It is not bad news.

"What happened to her was that she was severely dehydrated and physically exhausted. Her blood pressure was dangerously low, and her blood sugar had gotten so low she lapsed into a coma."

"Not to mention her head was bleeding. Her brain was swelling, so we needed to put a borehole in the back of her head. She had fractured her Occipital bone when she hit her head on the console table," is what the doctor told Horatio.

While the doctor is telling Horatio what had happened to his sister, a nurse comes up and whispers something in the doctor's ear so quietly that Horatio can't hear.

When the doctor talking to Horatio hears what the nurse is saying, he leaves with her and doesn't say a word to Horatio. That leaves poor, Horatio not knowing what is going on in the trauma room with his sister.

Inside the trauma room, a nightmare of a different kind is transpiring. When the surgeon removes the drill bit after they had drilled a borehole in her skull, Renee began to crash.

With fresh head trauma, Renee has a massive seizure, and her heart stops before the doctors had a chance to give her a dose of Phenobarbital to stop the seizure. Her seizure starts in her left hand, and it quickly sends her into grand mal convulsions. The doctors are trying to restart her heart anyway they can.

The doctors shocked her heart at two hundred joules and got no response. Gradually they start to add more and more power to the defibrillator trying to restart her heart.

Two hundred fifty joules is the next amplitude, and again they get zero response. Cranking it up to three hundred joules then three hundred fifty joules, they still are unable to get her heart beating.

The continuous loud monotone beep of her heart monitor flatlining is a constant reminder that she is dying. The doctors shock her heart countless times and even put Epinephrine and Atropine into her IV, but nothing is working.  
After more than an hour of them trying, Alexx came into the waiting room. She tells him, "If Renee doesn't respond in the next five minutes, we will be forced to call time of death, and nobody wants that."

Horatio begs them to keep trying. There has to be something that they hadn't attempted yet. There was one thing that they hadn't tried yet. It is intra-cardiac adrenaline. If Renee is going to respond to this drug, it will be fairly immediately.

When doctors stab her heart with the intra-cardiac adrenaline, Renee offers no response. Renee is out of options, and the trauma room fell silent. The only noise in the room is the long continuous sound of a flatlining heart. None of the doctors want to call it, but they have to.

Alexx is forced to make perhaps one of the hardest calls she ever had to make, "Time of Death 03:46 AM."

Now she has to tell Horatio that the only blood family he has left was gone. Horatio jumps to his feet as soon as Alexx walks into the waiting room area.

"Tell me she's going to be fine, please tell me she's okay," he pleas with his friend.  
Alexx is unable to relieve his fears. She slowly shakes her head. She tells him, "I'm so sorry, baby, she's gone; we lost her."

Horatio responds the way that Alexx thought that he would. He just loses it when he punches a hole in the wall and attempts to throw a waiting room chair through a window.

One of the nurses is going to call security, but Alexx stops her.  
"He just lost the only blood family he has, and he is venting. Leave him be," Alexx whispers in the nurse's ear.

Horatio knows it's early in the morning, but he needs his brother-in-law there with him. He can't get himself to go into her room by himself.

When Eric sees who is calling him at 04:00 AM, he just knows in the pit of his stomach that something is horribly wrong. The only reason for H calling at that hour was if something had happened to his sister.

Before Horatio can get the words out, Eric asks his brother, "H, what happened? Did something happen to Renee?"  
"There was an accident at home. It's really bad. Renee's gone, Eric. My baby sister is dead."

Was how Horatio answers Eric's question in a quiet and shaky voice.

For a few moments, Eric is totally speechless since he is in complete shock.

Quickly Eric tells his brother that he'll be at the hospital as fast as he can. It takes Eric close to half an hour to get to the hospital. With Eric there for support, Horatio is finally able to go and say goodbye to the sister that he never got to know. He can not understand why he cares so deeply for her, despite only knowing her no more than four months.

Walking into her hospital room and seeing her for the first time since he had carried her into the ER, he thinks to himself that she looks so peaceful.

With Eric just outside the door to the room, he approaches his sister's bed. Horatio clearly remembers thinking to himself, "God Renee, you survived five tours of duty in Afghanistan, fourteen years in the Marines, three years at the border and two years here. Not to mention a physical assault and torture that would have killed anyone else. But a fall in the house is what kills you."

Shaking his head, he quietly approaches his sister's bed and leans over to gently kiss her forehead. As soon as his lips touch her, her ice-blue eyes open wide, she gasps for air and sits bolt upright. She almost smacks her brother in the nose in the process.

To say that she had scared him would be an understatement. But he looks at her and only sees someone who is confused and scared. Her eyes are wild, darting everywhere, looking desperately for something he can't see.

As he gently touches her arm, Renee jumps out of her skin, lashing out at her brother in sheer panic and fear. He doesn't know why, but his baby sister is simply terrified of something.

"Get away from me, leave me alone I don't want to go. I want to stay here with my brother," Renee screamed in complete terror.

With her door to her room closed, nobody can hear her scream.

She is fighting an unseen force when Horatio instinctively tries to pull her close, and he attempts to soothe her.

"Nae... Nae... Sweetheart... Baby... shhh... you're okay. Your back… I'm here, and I got you. Your safe and I'm not going anywhere,"

Horatio is going to whisper repeatedly until she fully comes back to reality, but that is not happening.

When she finally made eye contact with her brother Horatio realizes that she is in a delirious hallucination. Renee seems to be looking through him… not at him.

She is alive, but she is not there. He is very scared for his sister he's never seen her like this before. "She's fighting an inner demon," is the only thing that Horatio can think of as to what is happening to his sister.

As Horatio pulls her close, she fights her brother like her life depends on it because, to her, it does.

"Don't touch me... Get away from me, you, monster." She continues to scream as she strikes her brother in the face, which leaves a deep gash on his cheek.

Wiping the blood away, everything in Horatio tells him to leave her alone, but he knows that she needs him to be there and not to leave her.

With her door shut, H needs to call his brother on the cellphone, "Eric get a doctor, she's back. I mean, she's alive, but she's hallucinating."

Renee loses consciousness again right after Eric left to get a nurse. When she collapses in Horatio's arms, he is relieved that she finally calmed down.

"What was that about," he asks his sister.

The relief he had felt immediately disappears when he gets no response from Renee.

"Nae... Nae... Wake up... Open your eyes…"

Terrified that he lost her again, he desperately checks her for a pulse. He is able to breathe a sigh of relief when he feels a strong pulse.

Eric, who at the time is standing just outside the doorway when H calls him and tells him to go get a nurse. Eric is confused but obeys and runs to grab one of the nurses telling her what Horatio had told him.  
The news causes the nurse to run into Renee's room. Before she gets to Renees room, Renee collapses in Horatio's arms and slips into another coma.

Her brother doesn't know what to say to her. Renee didn't tell him that her physical therapist had told her to work for half an hour every day, but she is doing at least an hour. His sister is overdoing her physical therapy, and she isn't eating or drinking like she should have done.

Sitting by his sister's bed, he watches her sleep. He can't help but wonder why she doesn't do what her therapist told her. I mean, why did she not take care of herself when she has him ready and willing to help her.

When she wakes up a few days later, she gets the chewing out that she deserved.

"What were you thinking sweetheart, you can't overdo your therapy because you are not helping yourself at all. You are doing far more harm than good. You have to take care of yourself. You need to eat regularly and drink plenty of fluids too."

Horatio has to check himself because he is getting too worked up. He loves his sister and is trying to look out for her like any big brother would.

Renee is just not used to having someone she can count on since her mother died some seven years before. She is used to doing everything for herself. She is glad to have someone that she can count on, so she relents and listens to her brother's admonishment.

When she is released from the hospital a few days later, Horatio insists that she accompany him to work. With her walker, Horatio puts her to work, helping in the lab just to keep her busy and to make sure he can keep an eye on her at all times.

The last time he left her alone, she ended up in a coma and needed to have a borehole drilled into her skull. The last time he left her, she was declared dead, but she fought her way back to the land of the living. He is not going to risk losing her permanently.

Horatio and his team still need to find out who had put hits out on his sister and her dogs.

The Serbian Mercenaries are being very co-operative to Horatio. They want to avoid the death penalty. Horatio needs to be very careful and not let them see that Renee is very much alive.

They are only cooperating with him since they thought that they killed a cop.

Canaan is the most helpful, even offering to wear a wire and get the person who had hired him to confess on tape. To say that Horatio is surprised by this man's desire to be of help would be a gross understatement.

Horatio knows that they only have one chance to catch the person who put the hit out on his sister, and to do it, he will have to use the dogs again as bait. He knows he can't ask her again to risk her dog's lives. They will have to find another way. Maybe they just need a little help from the outside, and maybe some fresh eyes would be nice.


End file.
